Becca and I had been untangling birds for about an hour. (Eliina made me three strands of paper cranes threaded on gold string, for my birthday. And now these strings were tangled. Quite hopelessly.)

Untangling a knot is the most satisfying and least satisfying of tasks. Becca had more patience than me. I kept thinking if I just gave them all a simultaneous massage-like motion, they’d magically untangle. Nope.

It was like untangling your shoelaces — but with birds. So when we found an avenue for a string, the game became: pass this whole string of birds through this tiny loop.

At some point Becca asked: Is this going to be a blog post?

Yes, yes it is. Bird by bird, inching through impossible loops.

And Eliina: I love my paper cranes. Untangling them will become part of the memory.

I’d like to say we untangled them all, but we didn’t. They are spread out on my bed. But we’re close.

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect) describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain the behavior of others. It does not explain interpretations of one’s own behavior – where situational factors are often taken into consideration. This discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.

Last night I was reading at the coffee shop when Tanya appeared, carrying bags of pet-store hay for her bunny. Tanya and I took classes together, long ago, at The Neos. Our catch-up conversation made me close my book, put down my cold coffee and smile for a few minutes. She pens a delightful blog.

At the same place, same night, I ran into Kurt and Jessica, who told me of their magical trip to Al’s Deli. I need some spice cookies. Pronto.

1) I will surround myself with beautiful things. I will appreciate nature and art and words.

2) I will surround myself with fun things. Like margaritas, Cadbury Eggs and music I can dance to.

3) I will surround myself with interesting people — like the friends I already have, and, when I find them, other creative dorks and odd ducks.

4) I will learn to live in peace, then show other people how.

5) I will figure out how much I’m capable of loving, and how much someone is capable of loving me.

6) I will remember that the world is big and I am small. I will see as much of it as humanly possible, whether that means inspecting every blade of grass in my backyard or visiting the capitol of every nation.

7) I will leave something behind that will outlive me. Hopefully more than one thing.

–I’ve been doing Bikram yoga, under their $30 for 30 days deal, and mostly it is sweaty and crowded and a mad dash to undress, dress, sweat, unsweat, but there are moments during class when stillness descends, it’s just me and my quivering calf muscles, and the girl of me in the mirror — the same one I looked at one morning, dead in the eyes, and said I would try harder to be nice to her.

–My 1993 Buick LeSabre needs to lay down and rest now. More things keep breaking. And they’ll just keep on breaking. The latest: She needs a new TPS system, the system that controls the balance of fuel and air, and I said “Honey, tell me about it” and we cried a little, but I understand that she is old and it’s ok. She got to be a luxury car in this lifetime.

–On the walk to work this morning I found a Polish bakery with apple fritters for 81 cents — so screw you, Starbucks and your apple fritters flown in from Seattle.

There was all this STUFF I wanted to accomplish, all this pressure, all this panic. Be something, do something, keep moving. And then the past few weeks have been so hard — and actually, I can’t do much of anything, for once.

Sometimes you just have to give in. Like when I visited D.C. before Christmas and a snowstorm whalloped the entire city. I had plans — a show, friends, meetings, museums. But the storm wiped the agenda clean. It’s something I’ve always loved about snow storms. They are a relatively benign mandate to stay inside, limit your horizons, cross everything off the to-do list and make some hot chocolate. And so, on a grander scale, that is what I am doing.